Obsession (19 page)

****

Alejandro grabbed the list of supplies and equipment he’d been stockpiling for the rescue expedition and conducted a quick inventory. A shit load of stuff was missing.

Damn it.

Angie must have been planning this stunt for weeks, maybe even months. He should have seen it coming, should have known she’d try something like this. She’d been too friendly. Every morning she’d shown up in his office, coffee cup in hand and asked what the game plan was for the day. Not only had he given her every detail of his preparations, he’d also shown her maps, GPS coordinates, and all the potential problems with each approach. He had looked forward to each morning of working alongside her just so he could hear her husky voice, smell her scent, and feel her feathery “accidental” touches on his hands, shoulders, and neck.

He’d been conned.

He should have known she was planning something. The day she’d asked about destroying her father’s compound should have been a red flag to him. Lulled by her beauty, mesmerized by her quick mind and rare laughter, he’d given her every answer. Were there clues he missed in her questions?

He closed his eyes and tried to recall each detail of that morning. She’d leaned over his shoulder, the strands of her long red hair brushing the back of his neck. The scent of her shampoo mixed with an undercurrent of her own essence had given him an instant hard on. He slid his chair further under the desk to hide his growing erection and struggled to maintain control of his voice when her warm breath caressed his ear.

“Give me something
bigger
.”

Had she known he was about to burst out of his pants? Had she seen his hands shake when he moved the mouse to zoom the satellite map? Attempting to take deep slow breaths, he’d pointed to the monitor and shown her the outlines of the wind mills and solar panels that powered Edmondsville.

With her cheek close to his face, he felt her heat pulsing against his brow. She whispered, “Why can’t we blow these up, throw them into panic and confusion?”

“That’s part of the plan.” He cleared his throat, his voice thick. “We’ll do that
after
we have Jake.”

“What will we use?”

“C4.”

Alejandro covered his face with his hands. Two bricks of C4 and a bunch of detonators were missing. She could blow herself up before she even had the chance to use it against her father.

Dogging his every step, asking a million questions, Angie had been all over him for the last three months. She never wrote anything down.

Now he realized she didn’t need paper and pen. As an attorney, she’d probably memorized an entire library for law school. This whole expedition was locked into her brain. And she’d taken enough supplies to last a month in the wilderness. If the C4 or her father’s goons didn’t kill her, he’d kill Angie himself—if he found her.

Anxious to get going, he grabbed meals ready to eat, MREs and bottles of liquid protein off the metal shelves and ran scenarios through his mind. It wasn’t as if he could have her tracked by her cell phone. Coverage in many areas of Mexico was spotty on a good day. In the remote Copper Canyon areas, she was completely off the grid.

He spotted the untouched satellite phone charging on the workbench and decided to add that to the bag, but his hands were full of bottles of concentrated protein drinks. He jammed them into his pockets any which way he could for the time being. Alejandro packed the mobile phone into its carry case and prayed the thirty-six hour standby and four-hour talk times were true. He had no idea where or when he’d find her. Again, if he found her.

The thought stopped him cold. Don’t go there. Don’t even think about the possibility that she might be captured by her father. Or blown up. Or kidnapped and sold into a Mexican brothel. The thought of the beautiful, proud redhead enslaved like poor Natasha and forced to parade around naked in front of filthy pigs—

Someone grabbed his shoulder.

Alejandro whirled and punched the intruder on the jaw.

The giant staggered back and shouted, “Stop. It’s me, your buddy, Tio.”

“Shit.” Alejandro shook his hand. “I think I broke my hand on your face.”

“You’re jumpy as a crack head.” The big man gazed at him with a puzzled expression. “What’s the matter, bro?”

“I’m worried about Angie. She took C4 and detonators with her.” Alejandro shook his head. “Pissed I missed all the signs. I should have known, should have prevented this.”

“
No Manches!
Don’t say that, man. You a mind reader?”

“No, but—”

“But, nothing.” The big bald guy lowered his voice. “I know you’ve got a thing for her. It’s cool. I can live with it. Maybe you can get in her pants. I sure couldn’t.”

“It’s not like that.” Even as the words fell out of his mouth, Alejandro knew he was lying, and worse yet, sounded like an idiot.

Tio’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. You’re really sweet on her.”

“Maybe.” His lowered his eyes, and his voice choked up. “Yeah. A little.”

“
Compadre
, that’s screwed up. You can’t go getting involved like that. It’s no good in our business.”

Alejandro shrugged. “I know.”
It’s bad for the undercover ATFE business, too.

“What will you do if that
cabrón
, her asshole father, has her?”

Alejandro raised an eyebrow. “What would
you
do?”

“I’d bury him up to his neck in the desert and let the buzzards eat his head for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Right now, I’ve got to finish packing. Since you’re here, you can help. Whatever guns you’d take on this trip, that’s what I want.”

Tio’s eyes lit up. “How much room you got?”

“Not enough for a rocket launcher. I need to travel light.” He pointed at his ride. “I’m taking an ATV and whatever I can strap down behind me.”

“Then you need the same as Angie—a Remington and a Glock.”

“
Bueno
.” Alejandro turned toward the duffle bag and stopped. “And, I’m really sorry I punched you in the face.”

“You surprised me, that’s all.” Tio rubbed his jaw and gave Alejandro an odd look. “Funny. You don’t hit like an accountant.”

“It was a reflex. I was all wound up, worrying about Angie.”

“Yeah, sure. One thing.”

“What?”

“You
ever
hit me like that again, friend or not, I’ll kill you.”

Time froze and Alejandro locked gazes with the big man. Tio wasn’t joking. Fuck. He was
supposed
to be a computer nerd, a dishonorably discharged Green Beret and technogeek, with minimal military or martial arts training. All his training with guns, he had told Tio and Pepe, had come from working alongside drug dealers in the US. The big men had laughed and tousled his hair like a kid and treated him like a mascot.

Dammit to hell.
Had he just blown his cover with that stupid knee jerk reaction? The Glock tucked into his waistband burned the flesh of his back like a red-hot poker, and sweat trickled between his balls. Could he get to the gun before the big man reached his shoulder holster? He held his breath.
Don’t flinch, don’t give him any reason to shoot you.

Tio pointed at Alejandro and burst out laughing. “I really had you going, bro.”

Alejandro blew out a huge breath and gave a shaky laugh. “Ha. Yeah, you sure did.”

Still laughing, the giant ambled toward the house. “Wait till I tell the guys I made you piss your pants.”

Alejandro looked down at his crotch. It was soaked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an empty plastic bottle. Somehow, the top of a protein drink had come off—and saved his life.

Chapter Fourteen

A thick quilt of silence enveloped Angie. Alert and pain free, she opened her eyes and watched the earth fall away beneath her. A charred pine tree smoked near the overturned MUV. Rose quartz gray clouds whipped themselves into a frenzy and pelted the vehicle and a white clad figure with rain drops the size of golf balls.

Her body. Her corpse. Oh shit.
Dead again.

Not only had she failed to reach the cabin, she’d managed to kill herself in the process.

What would become of Jake? Would Alejandro still try to rescue him? Or would Isabel call off the mission? Dammit. She’d
really
screwed up this time.

Or had she? Maybe she was just having a terrible dream. Or hallucinating. After all, hadn’t she been raised on a steady diet of hellfire and brimstone, laced with a side order of toxic threats?

Get it together, woman
. Every time she had a physical injury, it seemed her mind flipped out to the dark side of crazy. Hadn’t the same thing happened when Jake was born?

She’d done the research. Pregnancy hormones mixed with hypoxia from loss of blood had caused massive delusions, not an out of body experience. Neurons firing randomly, creating images so vivid, she thought they were real. Just like her father with his freaking temporal lobe seizures and “visions” of God.

That’s all it was. In a bit, she’d come to, be a bit battered, but ready for action. She pinched herself.

Felt nothing.

Pinched again and watched her fingers pass through her wrist and reappear on the other side.

Deep breaths. Don’t get all freaked out. You’ll wake up, you always wake up.

She might as well relax and play along with the hallucination.

Okay, let’s see where this one went. Demons or angels? Which would her addled neurochemistry conjure up this time?

She strained her eyes, searching for the long, dark corridor in the vast sea of white clouds. Come on. She couldn’t hang out here all day. She had to get back to work, back to her mission, back to saving her son’s life. She spotted a dark swirl up ahead and began walking toward it. The spinning hole in the white clouds grew into a tunnel. Now they were getting somewhere.

Where was the angel? It was her hallucination. She was in control of it. He had to be around here somewhere. She’d find him and strike a deal. Her life for Jake’s. Send her back long enough to rescue her son, get him to safety. Then she’d die. Maybe that would jolt her back to reality.

At the end of the black tunnel, a blinding light shone. About time he showed up. It felt as if she’d been waiting for hours. A large figure emerged between the darkness and the light. She watched as his huge white wings unfurled before her. And more wings. And more wings. And still more wings, so many wings she lost count. Against her better judgment, she felt her jaw go slack. This was not the same hallucination she’d had before.

This creature burned like a pillar of fire, yet was not consumed. Sparks flew off this delusional being and thunderclouds whirled around him. And he was gigantic, taller than any tree she’d ever seen. She felt like an ant must feel around humans. Something was very wrong.

Rather than being elated by his presence, she was terrified. This could
not
be good. Who was he? Did she smell sulfur? Had she fallen into hell instead of heaven? Was this fiery being Satan? Or was it one of his demonic minions?

Feet frozen in place, her heart competed with her lungs to escape from her constricted chest. She wished she were dead. No. Yes. Well, perhaps technically she
was
dead. Was there something worse than death and was it coming for her now?

Blazed into his chest was the Tetragammaton, Yod, He, Waw and He, or YHWH, four letters in Hebrew that indicated God’s divine name. She racked her brains, trying to recall her father’s endless sermons and exhortations on demons and angelic beings. Why hadn’t she paid better attention? She should
know
this hallucination by name.

The creature roared. “Why have you rejected my gift? I sent you one who would save you, yet you abandoned him.”

Her heart dropped from her throat to where her stomach had once been. She struggled to cling to her attachment to reality, to the thoughts that tethered her to earth. And lost the battle.

She was beyond dead. She was in deep shit.

But what did she have to lose? Ears ringing, eyes filled with tears, she shouted into the tempest of his wrath, “I didn’t reject my son or abandon him. I know he’s special. Jake was
stolen
from me. If you’re truly an angel, you’d
know
that.”

“How dare you speak to me in that way?”

The flaming pillar grew before her eyes. She shielded her face from the blaze.

“How dare you say I rejected my child?” She stomped her foot. “And get down here. I will not negotiate with someone I can’t see eye to eye.”

Thunder rumbled.

“You wish to stare at my face?” He popped down to her size and stepped next to her. The flames died down around him, and he flicked a few final embers off his wings. Up close, he was younger than she thought. And he was laughing.

His name flashed into her mind and she fell to her knees.

“Metatron.”

“Exchange not Yahweh for me. Arise that we may speak.”

She stood and faced the Lord’s messenger. “Forgive me. I’ve had a bad day. I didn’t recognize you.” She knew she sounded like a dolt. It was her world, her creation, her hallucination.

But, on the off chance he was real, what did one say to God’s envoy? To the being who spoke through another predicting the great flood and the end of the world? The one who saved Isaac from his father’s knife? To the angel who sat with Moses as he lay dying?

He laughed again. “You have many questions.”

She stared at him. Had he read her mind?

“Yes, I can hear your thoughts and see what’s in your heart.” He took her oh so pale hand in his large dark one. “Walk with me.”

****

Alejandro pushed his ATV up the hill as fast as he dared on the slick surface. If he got hurt, it wouldn’t help Angie. The storm had lashed him for the last twenty miles, and his hands cramped from the effort of staying upright and on track. Thunder rumbled, but this time it was further away. He crested the hill, looked down and spotted the wrecked MUV. His heart lurched.